Elisa Redmond of Dublin, Ireland, visited the Cotton Museum of Memphis
earlier this year, where a series of life-sized mannequins recreate the old
trading floor of the Memphis Cotton Exchange.     (Photo: Lance Murphey)

 Telling Cotton’s Story

 Cotton Museum embarks on major membership drive

Friday, August 19, 2011

By Aisling Maki



The Cotton Museum at the Memphis Cotton Exchange has attracted more than 40,000 visitors from around the world since opening its doors in 2006, but new executive director Anna Mullins is on a mission to engage more Memphians in the story of the crop that helped shape their community.

Elisa Redmond of Dublin, Ireland, visited the Cotton Museum of Memphis earlier this year, where a series of life-sized mannequins recreate the old trading floor of the Memphis Cotton Exchange.



Most visitors to the Downtown museum, located in the Memphis Cotton Exchange building at 65 Union Ave., are tourists, and Mullins said the majority of them seem to be visitors from outside the United States.

“It’s fantastic, and we love to have them here,” she said. “They’re so fascinated with the story and it’s a great introduction to the city. But it’s also a wonderful story if you’re from Memphis to really understand the city you live in.”

Mullins, a former editor at the Commercial Appeal, stepped into her new role in May. Prior to her stint at the newspaper, she worked in the editorial department of a publication covering the international cotton trade.



“I was sort of a journalist in the industry, and that introduced me to this community of people, and it’s really a fascinating group in Memphis,” she said. “I don’t think a lot of people know that this industry still has a very strong presence here, and it’s a very dynamic community.”

For generations, the historic Cotton Row district that surrounds the museum was the epicenter of the international cotton trade, and the museum’s main exhibit hall is the original Memphis Cotton Exchange Trading Floor, which has been restored to its 1930s appearance.

Although trading no longer occurs on the exchange floor (it’s now done online), the Bluff City remains the global center of cotton business. The Memphis Cotton Exchange, whose offices are just above the museum, is the only active cotton exchange left in the United States, and maintains its place as a rule-making body for cotton trading.

The museum, which markets itself as the nation’s most important national museum devoted to cotton, guides visitors through the history of the city and surrounding region, from the days of slavery and sharecropping to the contemporary high-tech cotton industry.

“I think when people come to the museum, they find that it’s a very multi-layered story,” Mullins said. “The reason we want local people to become members of the museum is because it’s very much a Memphis history museum. Memphis was founded because of the cotton industry – its culture, art and politics were all so heavily influenced by this one plant. So that’s the bulk of the story we tell.”

The Cotton Museum has just embarked on the first major membership drive in its five-year history.

“We’re letting people know that our membership has some new benefits,” Mullins said. “While you do get free admission to the museum for a year, there are also a number of events that we’re going to start hosting. Specifically, we’ll have quarterly member events.”



Membership now includes everything from member parties and other social events to author talks to family fun days featuring storytellers and hands-on science projects.

“Basically, we want the museum to continue to develop, not just as a museum with our exhibition on cotton, but to be sort of a resource for Southern studies in Memphis,” Mullins said. “We’re inviting authors, musicians, people who have ties to agriculture and to the Delta culture.”



The Cotton Museum has also ramped up its educational programs to make the space a destination for K-12 students, most notably with the creation of a new educational wing featuring a large interactive exhibition space.

The space currently houses the museum’s newest, national agricultural award-winning exhibit, “The Changing World of Cotton,” which explores cotton production, how it’s changed over the years, and how that change has transformed American life and the Southern landscape.

“It’s a great place for students because it touches on so many of the subjects they’re learning, from Memphis history to social studies to science,” Mullins said. “It really integrated all of these fields.”



The museum houses a large collection of audio and video history, including a documentary produced by Memphis filmmaker Willie Bearden and funded in part by The History Channel.

“It’s a big story, and it’s a story we’re still telling,” Mullins said. “We’re constantly adding oral history as we collect audio and visual clips of people who were part of these communities – especially people who were part of the old Memphis cotton business – and asking them to give us personal accounts of what it was like to be in Memphis and be part of this business.”

For more information on Cotton Museum membership, which starts at $45 for an individual, visit http://www.memphiscottonmuseum.org/

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